Thursday, March 14, 2013

Adolescence 2.0: The Blue Bird’s Song. Part I.

"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell." ~ Edna St.Vincent Millay

Early mornings followed a ritual at
the Itou household. Trinity dragged her reluctant body from the warm, cozy hug
of her blankets, pillows, and queen-sized bed to step into the prickly cold
arms of the mistress called five AM. Once she cleared that most difficult
hurdle, she switched into a comfortable, familiar rhythm: opened the dresser,
grabbed her exercise garb, socks, and dropped her knees to the floorboard to reach
under the bed for her sneakers. She combed her cropped hair, but nothing too
serious since she was headed out for her usual eight mile run. On the way to
the stairs, she walked past her mother’s room, its door always flung wide open.
Her mother, Miranda, sat in an armchair facing the window, and she rubbed her fingers
back and forth against the upholstery. She stared outside as if the most
interesting show in the world was on display.

An enemy of
inane idleness, Trinity disapproved of how her mother focused on nothing before
every sunrise. However, she knew enough to leave her alone. For nine years, the
woman refused to talk to her only child, and as far as Trinity was concerned,
the only person who cared about her existence. Her father, Henry, divorced her
mother when Trinity was in high school, and he later married a beautiful blond
woman named Julie Andrews (no relations to the amazing, real Julie Andrews). They moved to Washington State forever and had
three beautiful children that she had yet to meet, but had seen in pictures
when she spied on her father through facebook. He looked happy with his beautiful
family. His parents had died before Trinity was born and, unlike her mother who
too was an only child, he had four siblings, all scattered in different states.
Her mother never cared much for them and vice versa, but while Nana was alive, Miranda
had recovered and been okay. With her grandmother in the house to mediate
between them, Trinity almost forgot her mother’s silence toward her.

You
shouldn’t have died so early; You
shouldn’t have left us alone, she said to her grandmother’s picture that
sat on a round, three-legged Mahogany table at the base of the stairs. The elderly
woman with the broad warm smile said nothing of course. Nana had always loved her
even when Trinity came out in the first year of college.

“So you
fall in love with women, you’re still my Trin Trin, strong and kind. I thought
something was strange when you didn’t bring any boyfriends home. Oh dear, was
that best friend of yours actually
your girlfriend, then?” Nana had
laughed, holding her belly, and Trinity had laughed along with her, giving her
a tight hug, tears of joy in her eyes.

The news zipped Miranda's mouth shut, and she stopped talking
to Trinity altogether since then. Her father had bombarded Trinity with a series of
offensive rhetorical questions, and worse, blamed her sexuality on her mother.
At present, they held sparse communication with an email here, a facebook
message there, and phone calls on major holidays. Her father had yet to invite
her to his home because they both knew Julie Andrews, a staunch Evangelical
Christian, would not accept her presence at the house, and heaven forbid,
around the children.

Trinity went to the kitchen to fill
out her mini water bottles to snap around her hydration belt. When Nana was alive,
this house breathed and lived with her laughter, old jokes, bustle and
movement, sizzling aromas of meals she cooked, and commotion from the game
nights that she hosted for her friends from the YMCA where she exercised and
swam every week. Nana loved to exercise. She had always been an athlete since
her younger days. The autopsy dryly reported she died of
natural causes, but nothing natural could explain the way she died at seventy-two. It was shocking
and cruel like a kidnapper killing his victim even with the ransom paid.

Nana took the life of the house
along with her death last year. Trinity’s mother shrank further into herself
and stopped teaching English at the local high school. At least she still wrote
her poetry and occasionally played the piano in the living room, but nothing
more. She hardly left the house except to go grocery shopping or have her hair
cut in the same chin length bob she had after the divorce. Her best friends
were that armchair in her room and whatever happened outside her window. When
was the last time Miranda cracked a smile? If she did, Trinity was never there
to see it. All she saw and felt now was emptiness. Emptiness transformed this four
bedroom Victorian house into some arctic castle in the middle of nowhere,
tucked far away from all life, joy, and hope.

She stood frozen with a bottle in
her hand. She half-expected and half-wished Nana to walk into the kitchen and begin
making steamed white rice, grilled fish, miso, and omelet.

“Don’t want you to eat that
miserable bowl of cornflakes before going to work. I know you. That’s depressing.
A real meal is better,” she would say.

No one made her breakfast now. Miranda had stopped
that when she was in college.

And that’s
why Trinity wanted a life long partner, someone who was in it for the whole
journey, not just a joy ride. She had enough of joyrides. She wanted someone by
her side to love and love her back, someone to share this home with her and
hopefully, raise children together. She wanted to resurrect this dead house, to
again feel something close to the life that Nana kept alive.

She thought
she could have that with Valerie, but her ex-girlfriend’s uncertainty blocked
any progress. Maybe this final break-up would give Trinity a chance to meet
someone willing to grow with her. Valerie.
Although she said she wanted some distance, she still hoped they could remain
friends. Nana had loved and treasured Valerie like her own granddaughter. She
remembered how they would sing and laugh together while Nana played the piano…

Trinity eyed the clock in the kitchen
and realized she was twenty minutes behind schedule. But for the first time in the past year, she
didn’t care. Instead of rushing out the kitchen door like yesterday and the day
before, it occurred to her that ever since her grandmother died, she had never
made it out to her runs on time. Maybe without knowing she too did what her
mother did alone in her room.

"It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live." - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

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